Building your own distro

At the start of the previous chapter, I told you that Yocto gives you the ability to build your own custom Linux distribution. This is done by way of a distro layer like meta-poky. As we have seen, you don't need your own distro layer to build your own custom images. You can go a long way without ever having to modify any of Poky's distribution metadata. But if you want to alter distro policies (for example, features, C library implementations, choice of package manager, and so on), then you can choose to build your own distro.

Building your own distro is a three-step process:

1. Create a new distro layer.
2. Create a distro configuration file.
3. Add more recipes to your distro.

But before we get into the technical details of how to do that, let's consider when it's the right time to roll your own distro.

When and when not to

Distro settings define the package format (rpm, deb, or ipk), package feed, init system ...